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I like Lotus very much. Mostly as a concept, as I’ve never owned one, but I like the fact that it is a genuine British car company respected on the world stage, which is something we’re fast running out of in this country. And yes, I know they’re backed by Malaysians, but we’ll gloss that. So I’m glad to see that they’ve announced an entirely new range of cars which should seriously raise their profile. These are: the Elise, the Elite, the Elan, the Eterne and the Esprit. Try and say that 10 times quickly.

The thing is, they all look rather similar. I know car companies talk about a “design language” and that that goes on in every company, but this is ridiculous. When I saw the front cover of whichever recent Top Gear magazine had the Lotuses on the front, I thought they were just doing something arty with one car. It’s only when I looked closer and could detect the four doors of the Eterne and the wedge shape of the new Elise. I think they all look brilliant, frankly, but I think I’ll have a mite of difficulty differentiating an Elite from an Esprit if and when they come out. Lotus have said that they’re focussing all their efforts on the Esprit at the moment, which is perhaps the wrong car to pour the effort into given the “current economic climate”. Perhaps the Elise update might be a more populist vehicle to work on, a car for the people. Either way, I wish Lotus well, as ever.

Also, while I’m here, apologies for not having updates the blog for so long. I had to go to Iceland and things like that…..

So, in a follow-up to my post about the Volkswagen Bluemotion cars being better than Priuses, a Passat Bluemotion has just set a record for the longest distance traveled on one tank of fuel for a standard production car. A team from The Sunday Times took the VW, which has a 1.6 litre TDi engine with 105 gee-gees in it, from Maidstone to the south of France and back up again. It ran out of diesel near Calais, having completed a distance of 1526.63 miles, at an average of 45mph. Now, let’s not comment on how boring it must have been to travel at an average speed of 45mph through northern France. Let’s instead focus on what an achievement that is. Over 1,500 miles on one tank. My Freelander dreams of doing 1,500 miles on one tank. Heck, I dream of that.